Breus Blaauwendraad
Engineering Manager at Adyen - Platform Engineering
About me
I’ve been writing code for the past 15 years. My passion for software development started in my early teens, when I began building websites as a hobby and launched my first web development company at age 16. That enthusiasm led me to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Business & IT at the University of Twente, a minor in Computer Science at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and a joint master’s program in Computer Science at Radboud University and Eindhoven University of Technology, combining my interests in technology and problem-solving.
For the past 5.5 years, I've worked at Adyen, a global financial technology company, where I'm currently an Engineering Manager leading a team of seven backend engineers responsible for the development of Adyen's core Java frameworks and libraries. My team builds and maintains the foundations that power all Java applications across the company, supporting over 600 engineers and handling billions of requests daily.
I’m driven by building scalable systems, improving developer productivity, and applying sound software engineering practices at scale. Outside of work, I enjoy social activities, a variety of sports, and working on personal programming projects, some of which are visible on my GitHub.
Honors
Best paper award in the track Dependable Network(ed) Systems
For the paper (bachelor thesis): “The Performance Impact of Elliptic Curve Cryptography on DNSSEC for Constrained Hardware Architectures”
27th Twente Student Conference on IT
Skills & Interests
Programming (Java, Go, C), SQL, Gradle, Cryptography
Contact
Phone and e-mail address on request via LinkedIn
Work experience
2020 - now
Adyen
Engineering Manager - Platform Engineering
2023 - now
Leading a team of seven backend engineers responsible for the development of Adyen's core Java frameworks and libraries. Building and maintaining the foundations that power all Java applications across the company, supporting over 600 engineers and handling billions of requests daily.
Squad Lead - Platform Scalability
2022 - 2023
Leading a squad of three backend engineers responsible for the development of Adyen's core Java frameworks and libraries. Focused on improving framework reliability, developer experience, and system performance.
Java Engineer - Platform Scalability
2021 - 2022
Developing and maintaining internal (Java) core frameworks. Focused on improving framework reliability through comprehensive testing and performance optimization.
Java Engineer - Operational Scalability
2020 - 2021
Building and maintaining scalable REST/RPC services. Vastly increased integration and unit test coverage on services owned by the team by adding new test suites and stabilizing existing ones.
2019 - 2019
Suite Seven
Innovation advisor
Managing the implementation of a custom-built knowledge base web application and advising on the introduction of DevOps tools.
2019 - 2019
Accenture
Graduate research intern
Designing a post-quantum cryptographic digital signature scheme for multichain blockchain systems. Implemented the scheme in Go.
2018 - 2019
Suite Seven
Backend developer
Programming backend features for custom WordPress themes in PHP. Advising on GDPR implementations for customers' web applications.
2018 - 2019
SURFnet
Research intern
Conducting research on VPN obfuscation techniques, designing a UDP-to-TCP wrapper and implementing it in Go.
2017 - 2018
Skywire IT
Owner / Full-stack web developer
Programming custom-built web applications using LAMP stack.
2013 - 2017
BG Creations v.o.f.
Co-owner / Full-stack web developer
Programming custom-built web applications in HTML/CSS/PHP.
Education
2017 - 2019
Radboud University Nijmegen
MSc. Computing Science, spec. Cyber Security
TRU\e Security Master of Science. Collaboration program of the Digital Security group of Radboud University & Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Systems and Information.
2017 - 2019
Eindhoven University of Technology
MSc. Computing Science, spec. Cyber Security
TRU\e Security Master of Science. Collaboration program of the Digital Security group of Radboud University & Eindhoven Institute for the Protection of Systems and Information.
2016 - 2017
Chalmers University of Technology (SE)
Exchange / Minor, Computer Science
Courses: “Concurrent Programming”, “Algorithm Design”, “Cryptography”, “Testing, Debugging, and Verification”.
2014 - 2017
University of Twente
BSc. Business & Information Technology
Bachelor of Science. Curriculum consisting of half Technical Computer Science & half Industrial Engineering and Management.